Many people communicate over devices that exchange audio information over a shared connection. One common example of a shared connection is a teleconference wherein participants join the group from many locations, including multiple rooms within a building and remote locations. In a typical teleconference, the participants located within the same room at the same location use a device that includes a microphone and speaker combination (e.g., a speakerphone). Sometimes, participants in the same room may have difficulty hearing remote participants properly and being able to be heard by participants in remote areas. Sometimes participants use individual microphones and speaker combinations (for example, mobile telephones) to avoid problems associated with sharing a single microphone and speaker combination. However, the presence of multiple speakers creates an environment that may lead to other difficulties.
When participants in a teleconference speak, the microphone output signal from each participant is generally mixed together and sent to all other participants. When more than one participant is located within the same room using non-shared devices (e.g., mobile telephones), each participant hears not only the other speakers present in the room, but also hears a mixed version of those speakers' voices over the teleconference, thus creating confusion. It would be advantageous to avoid this sort of situation. It would also be advantageous to allow the relative location of devices participating in a teleconference to be determined (for example, determining which devices are located within an overlapping audio space).